Meet Global Impact Partner: Tekton Research

Kip McKenzie, CEO of Tekton Research, shares the organization's evolution from a single site to a network of 25 sites, highlighting their commitment to professionalism and growth within the clinical research landscape. 

Kip discusses the significance of site voices in driving successful clinical trials and their innovative personnel development strategies and highlights the Tekton University learning management system. Gain insights into their effective engagement with local universities for workforce development and goals for continued collaboration with the clinical research community.

Transcript

Jimmy Bechtel 0:00

Welcome and thank you for joining the Society for Clinical Research Sites for SCRS Talks. I'm Jimmy Bechtel, the Vice President of Site Engagement with the Society. SCRS Talks allows our partners and those we work closely with to take a few minutes to address issues of industry concern, Share exciting achievements and to learn more about our community today, we have Kip McKenzie, the CEO of Tekton research here to share their recent joining of the SCRS global impact partnership program and some of the reasons why they've joined. Kip, it's great to have you with us today. We'd love to learn a little bit more about you.

Kip McKenzie 0:38

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm Kip McKenzie, the CEO and founder of Tecton Research. I've been in the research industry for a little over 30 years at various roles have worked for a couple of different CROs, I was everything from a coordinator to a CRA to a project manager. And, you know, through my travels found that there's a lot of need for sites to be professionalized. And so in 2006, I founded Tecton Research.

Jimmy Bechtel 1:08

That's great, Kip, and we're extremely excited to have another site member, Tecton Research, as part of the Global Impact Partnership Program. So maybe start us off by telling those on the line a little bit more about Tecton Research and why then you decided to become a Global Impact Partner.

Kip McKenzie 1:28

yeah, so Tecton Research is a network of research sites that are wholly owned. We have 25 sites. We started in 2006 and stayed as a single site for many years and then started expanding a few years ago and have found a lot of success with you know, expansion into various therapeutic areas. And along the way, I actually think that we were formed the same year as S. C. R. S. So we've attended S. C. R. S. for many years, my team and I and, it's provided a place for our teams to share best practices with other research sites who are in similar situations and also have the same passions of creating research opportunities for physicians and patients. And the content at SCRS is very relevant to day to day workflows can express how many times our staff have gone on to chat and ask other sites questions and been able to get those questions answered. And so we're very impressed with SCRS and how they've been efficient at bringing sponsored CROs to the table, sites, and just trying to solve problems that all research sites, sites encounter. And so our team has a lot to contribute from over the years. And so that's why we wanted to join the, the global program is so that we could give back and be a bigger part of SCRS.

Jimmy Bechtel 2:51

Thanks, Kip. That's great. Yes, Tecton has been a staple at the SCRS summits for years now, and it's always great to see your team's smiling faces and truly representing that powerful voice of the sites, and I appreciate the sentiment you made around joining the solution because it's that positivity. It's that bringing everyone together. In a constructive way that is really the underscore of what SCRS does and why we've been able to make so many different advancements and changes in the industry. So I appreciate you citing that as a as a reason to become a global impact partner. But speaking to that sustainability. It really is, again, the number one priority of SCRS and you as a site and any of our other partners. So why does Tecton specifically feel listening to site voices is important for clinical research? What does that, that term mean? Listening to the voice of the site to you all.

Kip McKenzie 3:53

Yeah. So, you know, the sites are, are the key to all clinical trials. Nothing happens without sites. And, you know, I always use the analogy that you're balancing an elephant on a pinhead and don't mean that derogatory, but that you have huge pharma companies that are depending on small sites to deliver data that's going to be used for approval with their drugs. So over the years as tech has grown, we've run into challenges that other sites have run into. We've been able to to solve some of those challenges. We've also collaborated with other sites to be able to figure out things like, you know, operational needs, hiring challenges. Overhead management, cash flow, those types of things. And so it's, it's nice to hear that when you're at SCRS meetings that you're not the only one and that, you know, there there's other sites that have challenges. But the thing that's even more important and awesome is that SCRS has been able to bring sponsors and CROs as partners to listen to us and listen to challenges. You know, there's so many initiatives over the industry. Technology initiatives, you know all these initiatives that sponsors and CROs come up with. And so I think it's really critical that they listen to the sites to see how that's going to impact them at the site level because sometimes things are really good ideas on a. You know, from a general practice type view, but when you break it down into clinical research sites, it may not work as well. So I think it's really important that CROs and sponsors listen to sites and that we're partners with them. And I think that's what STRS and their platform, your, your platform has really done is allowed that to happen.

Jimmy Bechtel 5:37

Well, thanks Kip. Yeah. And it's great again, to have the support of sites like you to help make that possible. And. Continue to have the constructive discussions with the sponsors, CROs, and service providers that come to the table there. I think it's only solvable, as you really did allude to, when you bring all parties to the table and you have those discussions around what the challenges are and what we perceive the solutions to be. It's been one of the cornerstones of what we do at SCRS, so I I appreciate you bringing that

Kip McKenzie 6:11

sentiment up. Absolutely. SCRS has, done amazing job with that.

Jimmy Bechtel 6:16

Well, thanks, Kip. What initiatives or programs is Tecton working on that you're most excited about? And how might that maybe impact or translate to other sites? What, what could other sites glean from some of the amazing work that you're doing within your organization?

Kip McKenzie 6:34

I would say that the thing that I'm most excited about is our people you know, through the pandemic, it became a big challenge to hold on to personnel because there was such a need. And so, you know,, we crafted a way to find young individuals that are smart. You know, a lot of individuals just coming out of college and hiring those people. And then so the the thing we needed most was training and a way to teach them to do things the Tecton way. The word Tecton is actually derived from an Aramaic term that means you're a master of your craft, and that's something that we've emphasized over and over through the years. is that we want to do really quality work and we want to be masters of our craft. We want to be tectons. And so we across our leadership team and and through all of our expansion and into therapeutic areas and everything else, the thing I'm most excited about is the, the training that we've implemented and the way that we did that as we developed an learning management system ourselves that helps teach people that are new to research, but also even people that are not new to research how to do things the way that Tecton wants them done. Because we feel like it's really critical to have continuity between our sites and to raise people up and give them a chance to learn and develop. So we, we created a learning management system. We call it Tecton University and anybody that comes into Tecton has to go through training, including our investigators. So that's one way we've been able to solve personnel issues and get better at retaining people. We also have done things like you know, separate out job titles and make jobs that are a progression so that people can progress in their career. The thing that you hear. So often is you find a really good coordinator at a research site and there's really nowhere for them to grow. So they end up going to the, you know, to CRO or a sponsor as CRA and they leave the site world and go into the CRO world. And so we've really tried to come up with a way of keeping those people in the site world and showing them a path of development and a way to develop them so that they they have a career path.

Jimmy Bechtel 8:54

Wow Kip. Those are a lot of really great examples of retention and how you guys have really invested in your people. It's great to hear that sites are coming to us all the time with questions about what do I do? What can I do to retain my staff and keep them here and show them? So I appreciate the examples there. Would you mind expanding or maybe a little bit more into what you talked about at the former part of your discussion around the new staff, how you find new people. And you mentioned, local colleges and things like that. And I know our listeners would be interested to hear maybe some best practices or tactile things that they might consider when it comes to reaching out to, the potential workforce in their geographies.

Kip McKenzie 9:38

Sure. Yeah. So one of the things we've been really fortunate with is we have recruiters that recruit staff as well. And, you know, I know that's hard for smaller sites. When you get to a certain scale, you're able to have those type of support staff that can go and do that. But the way that that actually started was it was kind of by accident that we had investigators that were tied into local universities and tied into medical programs. And so we actually would go and speak at the local university to people that were pre med or, you know, in the science programs and tell them about clinical research and recruit them. And then it kind of became a word of mouth thing that, You know, if you had somebody that had just graduated from college that was thinking of applying to medical school. This is great experience for them. It's something that they can put on their resume and potentially get a recommendation from the position they work with. And so we just have kind of built on that and Then we obviously now have the recruiters that are targeting universities, targeting science clubs, that type of thing just to present the research area to really smart young people that maybe want to go and do a career in medicine or. You know, dental or whatever it is, but they're not prepared yet to to go. So, you know, we, we do have lots of young people that stay for two or three years and then they go to medical school and we're actually seeing now that Those people want to do research as physicians. So it's just it's a really good way to get really smart, intelligent people. And then, obviously, you have to have a way to teach them and train them so that they're not frustrated that they feel like they're valued and they're a part of the system.

Jimmy Bechtel 11:28

Thanks, Kip. I think that's a really great explanation and something to think about because. Even as a small site, which I appreciate your comment that it probably would be difficult for them. They're not going to have recruiters or or things along those lines, but even taking half a day and Popping down to the local university for the pre med students as you had mentioned is doable probably by most individuals to just educate that group of people about a enterprise that they have never even heard of before never thought about because you're you're looking at young people typically that have less medical issues probably unless they have some sort of medical challenge in their life long standing, they might not have ever heard of clinical research. I'll tell you that up until the point that I. Found my job in clinical research at the research site at the very beginning of my career I had never even thought about clinical research before and I was a biology student pre med student So it was literally something that hadn't even occurred to me or that we even talked about so even someone who was relatively attuned to medicine Hadn't really even thought about that as a career option. So I think that's It's the point is it's those little things, those little actions that we could consider taking as an individual, as an industry to help advance the future of our workforce. So again, appreciate your additional context around what you're doing there with people. It sounds like you're doing amazing work and hitting a lot of different points of not only. Finding new staff, but retaining and appreciating the current staff that you have. Thank you. So what then, as we wrap our conversation up here, do you see for the future of your relationship through SCRS and then ultimately through that, the rest of the sites That you attend conferences with and interact with on a regular basis.

Kip McKenzie 13:16

Sure. Yeah. So as I said earlier, you know, we've been attending SCRS for years and felt like we got, personally, I feel like I got benefit from that. And we wanted to get more. And so I feel like we're just getting started with that by joining the, the global impact partners. We've already started engaging more leadership to, to attend meetings. And we're not only attending the meeting here in the U S but, and we've attended the European meeting and the sites now, the initiatives, the publications, webinars. That's, why I agreed to do the podcast, because I feel like it's important. So moving forward, you know, we're going to expand access to SCRS offerings to our entire clinical team. You know, we've had sporadic, people in the, the company that, you know, use the chat that go on to the website and, look through notes of what people have had. So we're actually planning to incorporate that incorporate that more into our training and to you know, make sure everybody in the company understands that it's there. It's clear that. S. C. R. S. Educational and networking content is available to support you know, new and seasoned clinical research professionals. So we see S. C. R. S. is one part of our team's growth and one way of helping us train as we continue to expand. One of my favorite sayings and one of the things I say a lot is I like win win relationships. And so with everything we do, I try to look at it through the lens of is this a good for, is this good for us? And is it good for whoever we're working with? And so with that in mind, you know, we want to get more involved as an impact partner. And, you know, as far as. new sites or other sites, you know, we want to be available to them if they have questions or if they have thoughts on how to grow or, you know, have problems that, that they can't solve, then we certainly want to be a resource for them.

Jimmy Bechtel 15:13

That's great, Kip. And I think that's a really great place and a great sentiment for us to end our conversation on. It's awesome to hear that there's sites out there that are here to help and here to mentor and here to learn and utilize the great resources that SCRS has and are continued advocates for the work that we do. So thank you for your dedication. Thank you for your continued Growth and in partnership with SCRS in the work that you do and congratulations and joining the program and continuing to develop.

Kip McKenzie 15:43

Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you to you guys for everything you do at SCRS. It makes a difference and we appreciate it.

Jimmy Bechtel 15:51

Well, everyone listening, make sure that you consider registering for those upcoming summits that Kip mentioned being held throughout the year by visiting the summit page on our website, myscrs. org. While you're on our website. Be sure to check out the other SERS publications and resources created for the community in the publications and member benefits section of that same website. We appreciate your participation and listening to today's program. I look forward to having you join us for more great content in the future. Thanks again for listening everyone.